Did you fall in love with Google+ ?

I can’t fall in love with Google Plus. May be my account is one of early ones opened before the automatic activation required by Google in order to use other services such as Youtube that allowed Google Plus to reach the about 350 millions today users.

Since the early releases, Google plus has been improved and we can say today it is a mature social networking platform. Desing, and user experience is the ever best among all social networks. You have communities, events and the capability to have live video chatting through hangout. It’s simply perfect.

So why can’t I fall in love with him? Probably this is a problem of Google+’s personality. If you could have the opportunity to ask who it is, Google+ couldn’t answer. Facebook is the enterteinment and friendship-relational social network. LinkedIN is the business social network. Twitter is the information and news social network. What about Google+?

GOOGLE PLUS HAS MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES

He doesn’t have own and well defined identiy. It is an enterteinment and friendship-driven relationship network (you have Friends among default circles), it gives you the opportunity to hangout with friends/circles (and this maybe is a real Plus). It would be a business network, due to the oppportunity to create communities and company profiles. It also would be an information sharing platform, thanks to the integration via “+1” button within websites. As usual, if you want to be too much, you are nothing.

GOOGLE PLUS WANTS TO PLAY ALONE

Since its launch, Google plus hasn’t been implemented with api allowing content syndacation with other platforms. This could be a strategic choice, but maybe not the right one. It’s strategic because it forces users to be engaged within G+, and this could be also the biggest limit. Indeed, users having blogs (personal or business) use to syndacate their contents automatically through social networks. They also share contents from facebook to twitter, from linkedin to facebook and from linkedin to twitter. Google Plus is let alone. Some services (such as TWOOGLE PLUS) created some tricks in order to bypass the Google+ api-lessness, opening profiles to potential secuity issues and they have been forced to close. So, syndacation between social-nets is now almost forbidden and blog posts must be shared in manually or semi-automatic way.

ALONE AND NOT FULLY INTEGRATED

More. It is integrated in the Android Ecosystem, but not so deeply. If your G+ circles could include your GMAIL Contacts and, hereby, your android contact list actually G+ is not able to enrich the mobile expirience due to the indipendent app you have to install. Facebook itself guessed the need to have and integrated app within the mobile and desktop. Google+, who has the pros to be a part of the same company, still has not a native integration, except for the contacts we said.

SO, HERE IT IS WHY I CAN’T FALL IN LOVE

The undefined personality is the big problem. G+ hasn’t already set a clear positioning and this missing is influencing the development strategy. It is closed to and from outside social environment and also within the android/google ecosystem. It didn’t decide if its main target is “friends”, “partners” or “business people”. It can’t say to the world why we should use Google+. So, they will increase the number of user for sure, but probably they will continue to not engage them more than the 7 minutes usually spent.

What about you ? I’m really curious to know what is your experience… let me know